Petraeus shocked at girlfriend’s emails to friend

During a talk last month at the University of Denver, Broadwell raised eyebrows when she said the CIA had detained people at a secret facility in Benghazi, Libya, and the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate and CIA base there was an effort to free those prisoners.

Obama issued an executive order in January 2009 stripping the CIA of its authority to take prisoners. The move meant the CIA was forbidden from operating secret jails across the globe as it had under President George W. Bush.

CIA spokesman Preston Golson said: “Any suggestion that the agency is still in the detention business is uninformed and baseless.”

Broadwell did not say who told her about CIA activities in Libya. The video of Broadwell’s speech was viewed on YouTube.

A Petraeus associate said the retired general was shocked to find out about Broadwell’s emails to Kelley. Petraeus was not shown the messages, but investigators told him the emails told Kelley to stay away from the general in a threatening tone.

Petraeus told former staffers and friends that he was friends with Kelley and her surgeon husband, Scott, and regularly visited their brick home with imposing white columns overlooking Tampa Bay.

Jill Kelley, 37, served as a sort of social ambassador for U.S. Central Command, hosting parties for the general when Petraeus was commander there from 2008-2010.

A photo shows Petraeus and his wife, Holly, with the Kelleys and Jill’s identical twin sister Natalie Khawam in the Kelleys’ front yard, decked out in party beads with a pirate flag in the background. Khawam, is a Tampa lawyer who works on health care fraud and whistleblowers cases, according to her Linkedin profile, which was removed from the professional networking site Monday. The sisters — hard to differentiate in the picture with their matching long dark locks and black dresses — also competed in a cook-off filmed for a Food Network show called “Food Fight” in 2003.

Jill Kelley regularly kept in touch with then-Gen. Petraeus when he became commander of the Afghan war effort, the two exchanging near-daily emails and instant messages, two of his former staffers say. But those messages were exchanged in accounts that his aides monitored as part of their duties and were not romantic in tone, the staffers said.

Kelley did not answer the door at her Tampa home Monday morning, and later left her home by car without talking to reporters. The Kelleys hired Abbe Lowell, a Washington lawyer who has represented well-known clients including lobbyist Jack Abramoff and former presidential candidate John Edwards, and released a statement Sunday through a Washington-based crisis management firm that she and her family had been friends with the Petraeus family for five years and wanted to respect their privacy.

Petraeus and his family are devastated over the affair, especially Mrs. Petraeus, who “is not exactly pleased right now,” after 38 years of marriage, said Steve Boylan, a friend and former Petraeus spokesman who spoke to him over the weekend.

“Furious would be an understatement,” Boylan told ABC’s “Good Morning America.” The couple has two adult children, including a son who led an infantry platoon in Afghanistan as an Army lieutenant.

Broadwell is married with two young sons and lives in Charlotte, N.C. She has not returned phone calls or emails seeking comment.

As the criminal investigation continued into the emails to Kelley, FBI Director Robert Mueller and eventually Attorney General Eric Holder were notified that agents had uncovered what appeared to be an extramarital affair involving Petraeus, said one of the law enforcement officials.

Broadwell and Petraeus have each been questioned by FBI agents twice in recent weeks, with both acknowledging the affair in separate interviews. The FBI’s most recent interviews with Broadwell and with Petraeus both occurred during the week of Oct. 29, days before the election, one of the law enforcement officials said. The FBI notified Obama’s director of national intelligence, James Clapper, of the investigation on Tuesday Nov. 6, Election Day.